


This darkness light

by lilith_morgana



Series: Notebook of the damned [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Gen, Lucifer (TV) Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 12:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19295725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: They say he was God’s most loved angel, the shining one.The truth is that he was hers.





	This darkness light

**  
**  
_This horror will grow mild, this darkness light.”_  
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

* * *

  
  
  
  
They say he was God’s most loved angel. _Samael, blood of my blood._ _Hêlêl ben shachar._  
  
Walking on Earth she learns the extent of that particular myth, how deeply rooted in the moral fabric of the human world it is, how fondly artists and writers alike treat it. The brightest and best of them all burning in the pits of Hell; the lightbringer trapped, frozen in ice; the morningstar darkened, faded. _Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven_ , they write and she thinks of the one time she had seen him down there, the one time his loyal demon had allowed her a glimpse of his face where he sat on his throne. The pain in him - twisted, heart-broken, still _shattering_ after all that time - had flooded her every second in Hell ever since and she had wept for him, decade after decade, while his demon had laughed.  
  
She clenches her useless flesh into fists as she reads the human lies, remembering the way her son had moved through Heaven, lit by the warmest fires and most brilliant visions. So certain of their love, of his rebellion, of his place among the angels. So unbowed before his father, reaching for everything, _asking_ for nothing because he believed he deserved it.

Then, at the end of everything: her hands in his hair, his wet face against her arms and the broken, terrified voice of the one child she had always known with certainty would fall and loved all the more for it.  
  
_You have corrupted Samael, wife. He speaks with your words._  
  
_Then punish_ me _, husband._  
  
_I am._  
  
They say he was God’s most loved angel, the shining one.  
  
The truth is that he was hers.  
  
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
  
It only takes a few seconds for her to recognise him in his human form.  
  
He is just as beautiful here as he ever was in Heaven, just as full of pride and passion. But one step closer, one unguarded moment and she can see Hell in his gaze, can sense it shivering beneath his smooth skin. Humanity confounds her but his pain is divine, it breaks through every shell it resides in.  
  
“You can stay,” he tells her, all those bright spots of light in him nearly hollowed out. She wonders if the humans even notice. “For now.”  
  
He would not believe her if she tells him she loves him.  
  
He does no longer believe that anyone can.  
  
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
  
  
Earth crumbles under her weight.  
  
The human children have needs that she can’t fulfill, faces that means nothing to her and are impossible to tell apart, their words a nonsensical chatter at the back of her head at all hours. She wants to send them away. Amenadiel refuses. She tries to escape their company. The lilim won’t let her. Instead they struggle inside their absurd residence, bounce between the laws and rules of small minds and even smaller imagination and she must fill her head with ancient hymns to the goddess she once were to drown out the horrors of the creatures calling her _mum_.  
  
She is a terrible mother in every dimension.  
  
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
  
  
Earth crumbles under her weight and she loses Uriel, her little one. Loses him here of all places, he who is born to reside in heavenly realms, not rot in the soil of the Earth. _Was it this you wanted, husband?_  
  
Her grief drowns in Lucifer’s guilt, the horror in his every movement when he returns, the wretched sounds of his voice as he sits by the window in his home, staring out at the sky. She thinks she can hear him speak to his father but when she looks at him, his lips are sealed. She thinks she can - of all unimaginable things - hear him _pray_ but when Amenadiel asks Lucifer throws a drink across the room.  
  
“I’m the bloody lord of the bloody Hell, ‘course I’m fine,” he spits in the voice she can’t remember from Heaven; it’s a human voice, harsh and desperate.  
  
It never leaves her thoughts.

\---  
  
  
  
  
Heaven was so cold once they had banished him; Azrael’s bowed head, Amenadiel’s silence, Remiel’s anger. Regardless of side, he was their brother.  
  
Heaven was so cold and in the bright lights of the Silver City God cried out for his exiled son.  
  
Her fall began with his; his fall is hers.  
  
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
  
  
For the human woman, he returns to Hell.  
  
For her son, she returns, too.  
  
Afterwards they sit in silence outside the hospital and she can still smell the brimstone and ashes on their bodies; Lucifer is breathing slowly, his chest rising and falling and she can’t look away. The doctor had said he nearly died, properly, the way humans do. Vulnerable, she thinks with horror and disdain. An angel, deconstructed by these cretins.  
  
She must return him to Heaven. To his place, his war.  
  
She must return him to Heaven before Earth claims him for its own.  
  
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
  
  
“I won’t betray him,” the doctor whispers, her voice is torn apart but still holds. It is almost admirable. “I _won’t_. I-”  
  
She thinks about the first war, thinks about the winged backs of the angels that marched out on Lucifer’s rebellion, leaving him to his father’s judgement. They had stood there and watched as he was banished from high heavens, stood there unmoving while her son, her most loved child, was torn from her.  
  
These humans, they guard him differently, more fiercely. 

  
  
\---  
  
  
  
  
  
At the end of everything he stands before her once more, wielding the Flaming Sword and she thinks briefly that he will betray her the way they betrayed him. One last revolutionary act from their morningstar; she would not blame him, she would do the same. Revenge runs heavy in her essence after all, and he is her son much more than he is his father’s.  
  
He raises the sword but there is no hatred in his eyes. Not for her, perhaps in this moment not even for himself; for a few slices of the time that she has yet to grasp the meaning of he is the same angelic boy that would wreak havoc in the golden halls of his first home.  
  
“My angel,” she tells him because she did not the first time they were driven apart. “I will miss you so much.”  
  
In war there are always casualties and he has made her one. Created a new realm to steer her away from both Heaven and Hell.  
  
“So, please, let there be light,” he says and it’s both devastating and lighthearted, human in that other way he has perfected up here - brittle and bright and charming, a smiling general, a brilliant king to his servants. If he wanted to, she knows with sudden clarity, he could march on the gates of Heaven and win their war. Now, at long last, he could.  
  
Now, at long last, he will not.  
  
They say he was God’s most loved angel, his Samael.  
  
The truth is that he was the one most like him, in the end.  


End file.
